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Re: Should bigamy be legal

What of it? Polygamy is illegal just like bigamy. Anyone who's engaging in it is breaking the state law, whether or not there is any official record of the partners involved.

Oh how very wrong you are, as proven by the recent case in Utah. In the first place, if a given person is not in possession of greater than one marriage certificate/license, then they cannot be charged with bigamy, no matter how many spouses they claim. Bigamy simply is being in possession of multiple marriage certificates/licenses of the legal variety. The one you create on your own at home with the computer and printer doesn't count. If a single certificate denotes more than two people in the marriage, then that is a single certificate, and none of the people upon it can be charged with bigamy.

The case in Utah has shown us that the government cannot charge people with the crime of polygamy or bigamy, if those involved have never sought or obtained multiple licenses or a single one for mor than two people (the latter of which does not currently exist in any state....yet). Without those legal papers, they are not violating the law. Right now I have a wife. Our marriage is currently legally recognized. We were married for 6 years, before we bothered to get said legal recognition. Prior to that point we could neither receive any legal benefit of marriage nor be charged with any marriage related crime. We are currently dating another woman. It is in the beginning stages, so who knows where it will go. But let's say my wife and I decide to marriage this other woman. As long as we do not attempt to get another license either between her and me and/or her and my wife, then we cannot ever be charge with bigamy or polygamy, no matter how many time we call the other woman our wife. There are hundreds of poly families in the US today, and not a single unit is breaking any law. Well, at least not any marriage related laws.

Re: Should bigamy be legal

Originally Posted by lifeisshort

When anyone can be married to anything as many times as they like marriage will be destroyed and meaningless so what is the point of a young hey to couple going through the motions. They may as well just cohabitate and that is what many Emanuel people want to happen, destroy American values one at a time

You like many others continue to confuse legal marriage with social and religious marriage. Two separate religions can hold to two separate definitions of marriage and who can be recognized as married under their religion and who cannot. A religion can refuse to recognize an interracial couple as married. It won't affect that couple's legal standing before the court. Only their standing before the religion. For several centuries, anyone could marry anyone else, or really anything else. The Catholic Church didn't start dealing with marriages until Pope Innocent III around the 13th century. Any couple could just walk into a town and claim to be married and they would more likely be considered as such. There was rarely any proof. You keep trying to attribute values to marriage that have never been universal to begin with.

Re: Should bigamy be legal

Originally Posted by maquiscat

You like many others continue to confuse legal marriage with social and religious marriage. Two separate religions can hold to two separate definitions of marriage and who can be recognized as married under their religion and who cannot. A religion can refuse to recognize an interracial couple as married. It won't affect that couple's legal standing before the court. Only their standing before the religion. For several centuries, anyone could marry anyone else, or really anything else. The Catholic Church didn't start dealing with marriages until Pope Innocent III around the 13th century. Any couple could just walk into a town and claim to be married and they would more likely be considered as such. There was rarely any proof. You keep trying to attribute values to marriage that have never been universal to begin with.

I suspect he's confusing it on purpose. He's obviously vehemently against plural marriages, and bigamy is ominous and insidious, so it'll get more of the negative response that he seeks.

If he were intellectually honest, he'd use the term "polygamy".

If you claim sexual harassment to be wrong, yet you defend anyone on your side for any reason,
then you are a hypocrite and everything you say on the matter is just babble.

Re: Should bigamy be legal

I have no idea who you are to associate you with anyone. And I have no idea what WBC is.

So was there a reason why you quoted me and posted this?

Westbrook Baptist Church, although you now have my apologies as this time around I noticed you sig line. In your case I would have been more accurate to compare the quoted post with people automatically associating your religion with Satan worshipers. You associated polygamists with Warren Jeffs. While indeed he and his are polygamous, they are hardly representative of polygamist as a whole. Certainly no more so than Satanists (either type) are representative of pagans as a whole.

Re: Should bigamy be legal

Originally Posted by maquiscat

Oh how very wrong you are, as proven by the recent case in Utah. In the first place, if a given person is not in possession of greater than one marriage certificate/license, then they cannot be charged with bigamy, no matter how many spouses they claim. Bigamy simply is being in possession of multiple marriage certificates/licenses of the legal variety. The one you create on your own at home with the computer and printer doesn't count. If a single certificate denotes more than two people in the marriage, then that is a single certificate, and none of the people upon it can be charged with bigamy.

The case in Utah has shown us that the government cannot charge people with the crime of polygamy or bigamy, if those involved have never sought or obtained multiple licenses or a single one for mor than two people (the latter of which does not currently exist in any state....yet). Without those legal papers, they are not violating the law. Right now I have a wife. Our marriage is currently legally recognized. We were married for 6 years, before we bothered to get said legal recognition. Prior to that point we could neither receive any legal benefit of marriage nor be charged with any marriage related crime. We are currently dating another woman. It is in the beginning stages, so who knows where it will go. But let's say my wife and I decide to marriage this other woman. As long as we do not attempt to get another license either between her and me and/or her and my wife, then we cannot ever be charge with bigamy or polygamy, no matter how many time we call the other woman our wife. There are hundreds of poly families in the US today, and not a single unit is breaking any law. Well, at least not any marriage related laws.

I have no idea what case you're referring to, and you don't cite it.

First you refer to "a single [marriage] certificate" that "denotes more than two people in the marriage", and you claim that "none of the people upon" that "single certificate . . . can be charged with bigamy." But in the very next sentence you say that "a single one [i.e. certificate] for more than two people . . . does not currently exist in any state." If so, why do you refer to that hypothetical kind of certificate and make claims about the legal status of people named on it?

A marriage of more than two people is a plural marriage, usually called polygamy, and it's illegal in almost all states, if not all fifty. Obviously polygamists have never been able to marry more than one wife in the same proceeding, because that would not qualify as a marriage under state laws. It should be just as obvious that none of them could have formally married another wife once already married to the first one, because that too would have been bigamy from the start, and therefore illegal.

So when a Mormon, for example, lived as man and wife with four women in different households, he was engaging in polygamy, as it has traditionally been defined. And to conceal that crime, he must either have used aliases or only have been legally married to one of them. If either or both of two people who are married to each other cohabit with one or more other people, they are engaging in polygamy,

Re: Should bigamy be legal

Originally Posted by lifeisshort

So a marriage between same sex couples is now legal across the land so the logical nest issue is bigamy.If the same sex can be married why not multiple partners? It sees like the term marriage and family are now open ended terms and are being redefined daily so if you are for gay marriage you surly must be for bigamy too I would think. Or are you?

Re: Should bigamy be legal

Now the story give a false impression of the difference between bigamy and polygamy towards the end. Under the current legal set up, regardless of the variations between the states, the only way to obtain a legal marriage between 3+ spouses is to obtain multiple marriages certificates/licenses, which is indeed bigamy. Which brings us to....

First you refer to "a single [marriage] certificate" that "denotes more than two people in the marriage", and you claim that "none of the people upon" that "single certificate . . . can be charged with bigamy." But in the very next sentence you say that "a single one [i.e. certificate] for more than two people . . . does not currently exist in any state." If so, why do you refer to that hypothetical kind of certificate and make claims about the legal status of people named on it?

I refer to the hypothetical one as a possible legal documentation which would not be counted as bigamy. I'm trying to show the key difference between bigamy and polygamy.

A marriage of more than two people is a plural marriage, usually called polygamy, and it's illegal in almost all states, if not all fifty.

Again, the legal marriage is separate from the social/religious marriage. The recognition of one does not require the recognition of the other. If that legal document is not present then the law is not violated. The few exception would be similar to Utah where they said by common law marriage all of you are married (and if SSM is made legal in a state with common law marriage then it applies to same sex couples as well, so think of all the havoc this could render) and now you are in violation of bigamay laws (since they would considered them as multiple marriages versus a single marriage with 3+ spouses). It's basically entrapment. But in pretty much any other state, you can claim to be in a polygamous marriage till the cows come home and they won't bother you unless and until you try to obtain the legal recognition.